Crying Wolf

12

“This,” said Grace as she stepped up and through the open rectangle high in the back of the janitor’s closet in the basement of Plessey Hall, stepping up and through as though it were some athletic event in which she specialized, “reminds me-”

“Of Alice,” said Izzie.

On the other side, Grace turned, made circling motions with her hands as though blocked by some barrier, a mime beyond the looking glass. She laughed, a little laugh, excited, like a giggle. “Where was that cave?”

“New Mexico.”

“The other one-the out-of-bounds one, where the bat flew into your hair.”

“Kashmir,” said Izzie.

“This is like that, only colder,” Grace said. “Nat?”

“Yeah?”

“Close the door behind you.”

Nat closed the closet door. Everything went black.

“Where the bat flew into Izzie’s hair,” Grace said in the darkness. “But I was the one who screamed.”

“Bats don’t bother me at all,” Izzie said. “And what makes you think you screamed? You’re not the screaming type.”

“I’m not?”

Nat reached into his pocket, took out a pack of souvenir matches from Pusser’s on Virgin Gorda, lit one. The sudden light captured a surprised look on Izzie’s face; and a terrifying one, unless it was some trick of the match light, weak and yellow-edged, on Grace’s. A terrifying look, as though she’d been reliving the bat experience, or making faces in the dark, practicing a silent scream. The terrifying look, if it was one, vanished at once, replaced by one of disapproval.

“You’re like a Boy Scout,” Grace said. “With those matches.”

“Or a pothead,” Nat replied. There were potheads at Inverness, but not nearly as many as at Clear Creek High.

Izzie laughed. She followed Grace through the opening, just as easily. Nat went last.

The match burned his fingers. He dropped it, lit another. The top of his head brushed the ceiling. “What is this place?” Izzie said.

Hard-packed dirt floor, damp air, a dripping sound, and the three pipes, the fattest one wrapped with asbestos. Nat recognized asbestos: they had some in the basement at home. “I think it’s a steam tunnel,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“For heating the campus.”

“That’s how they do it?”

Nat laid his hand lightly on the pipe. It felt cold. “Maybe at one time,” he said. He noticed a light switch on the wall, flicked it. Nothing happened.

“For heating the campus?” Grace said. “Does that mean there’s a whole underground network, connecting every building?”

“Makes sense,” Nat said.

“Wow,” Grace said, already on her way. He followed with the match, cupped in his hand.

“Does this have anything to do with the TV thing?” Izzie said.

“Who cares?” said Grace, moving on. Nat heard Izzie coming closer from behind, felt her hand on his shoulder, briefly. He lit another match and kept going.

They walked down, down because the floor seemed to be sloping slightly, down the steam tunnel, Nat leading with the matches after the first hundred feet or so, the twins following. “This is so cool,” one of them said. One of them: but he couldn’t tell which, and it was the kind of thing either might say.

“Who said that?” he asked.

“Me.” They answered together, at once, and both laughed. Nat laughed too. What the hell. And it was pretty cool down in the steam tunnel. He tried to figure out their direction-were they under the quad or going the other way? — and could not. Once he thought he heard a guitar playing somewhere overhead, very faint; after that, nothing but the sounds they made themselves, and from time to time, dripping water.

Nat had used up half the pack of matches before they came to a junction, a kind of crossroads, with an intersecting tunnel. He extended the match flame in all three directions: straight ahead and to the left, neither appearing different from what they’d already explored, and to the right. To the right was different: curtained off with spider webs, silvery and furred with dust. That meant-while Nat was thinking about what it meant, his match touched a silver strand, and flame ran up it like a fuse, followed the geometric pattern of the web, burned itself out in the center.

“That’s like a whole art project, right there,” one of the twins said. But which one: Nat really wanted to know this time. He turned, holding up the match. Their faces glowed in its light; the gold flecks in their eyes sparkled; he learned nothing.

“Maybe we should head back,” he said.

“Why?” said Izzie.

“We’re running out of matches, for one thing.”

“So?” she said. “We can always feel our way back. Why not-”

“Go till the last match,” Grace said.

Why not? Nat could think of reasons, but none that wouldn’t sound wimpy. They weren’t lost or anything like that, hadn’t even left campus; and feeling their way back would be easy with the pipes. “Which way?” he said.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Grace. She reached out and swept away the unburned webs. The webs: they meant that no one had gone that way in some time. And the corollary: that there had been traffic in the other passages.

They entered the right-hand passage, Nat leading. Now there were no pipes but the asbestos-wrapped one. There were also spiderwebs brushing their faces, and occasional soft things under their feet. Nat heard water dripping again, louder now, and for a moment thought he felt a warm breeze on his face. He was down to four matches when Izzie said, “I kicked something funny.”

They stopped. Nat bent down with his match, saw a magazine on the floor. He picked it up, blew off the dust, rubbed away grime with the heel of his hand: a Playboy magazine from May 1963. Grace took it, leafed through. In the match light, smiling nudes from long ago flickered by. “Incredible,” she said.

“It is?” said Nat.

“She means the hairdos,” Izzie said.

“Not just that,” Grace said. “Look how wholesome they are. Like a bunch of virgins with those tits and asses stuck on.”

“You think?” said Izzie, taking a step forward for a better view. The next moment, the very moment when the thought they look pretty good to me was going through Nat’s mind, there was a cracking sound and Izzie dropped through the floor. Nat reached out for her, losing the match, caught her by the sleeve of her jacket; a sleeve made of some slippery material, and he lost that too, and in the pitch blackness, she fell.

No one screamed. The twins weren’t the screaming type, and neither was he. Silence; the next sound a thump, down below.

Nat dug the matchbook out of his pocket, almost lost his grip on that too, almost couldn’t get a match lit; but he did. Grace was on her hands and knees by then, peering into a hole in the floor: a dirt floor, but beneath an inch or two of dirt lay what was left of a square door or hatch cover. Just the rotted outer frame and the hinges-the rest was splinters and a hole.

“Izzie?” Grace called down into it. “Izzie?”

No response.

Nat knelt beside her, lowered the match into the hole. He saw nothing; or almost nothing. Down there somewhere, how far he couldn’t tell, and off to one side, was a globe, a crystal globe that reflected the feeble match light from countless angles.

“What do you think-” he began, and then saw Grace getting a grip on a support beam at the edge of the hole. “No,” he said, grabbing her arm. She shook him off in one violent motion, then heaved herself down into the hole, hanging from the beam by her hands. The next moment she swung forward, like a gymnast on the high bar, but unlike a gymnast, went hurtling into the dark. Her body overprinted the crystal globe, then came a shattering sound, but light and almost musical, and Nat thought: chandelier. Grace, trailing a comet’s tail of match-lit crystals, fell from sight.

Nat heard a thump, much like the first, followed by the tinkle of crystals raining down, and then:

“Ow.”

Followed by: “Iz? Are you all right?”

“I was until you landed on my ankle.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“Spiderwebs in my mouth.”

The match went out.

“Nat?”

“Yeah?”

“We can’t see you.”

He lit another match. Two left in the pack.

“That’s better. Doesn’t he look like the Cheshire Cat?”

Nat leaned through the hole as far as could, held out the match at arm’s length, saw what must have been their faces, two pale ovals tilted up in the dark. “No one’s hurt?”

“We’re fine.”

“It’s kind of soft.”

“Like a bed.”

“What’s down there?”

“Hard to tell.”

“But it’s promising.”

“Oh, yes.”

Silence.

“Wait right there,” Nat said. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“For help.”

“Who said anything about help?”

“How are you going to get out?” Nat said.

He heard a soft crash, followed by tinkling glass, then silence.

“Could this be-?” one of them said.

“Not a-?”

“Mais oui.”

“Like a sign.”

He heard them laughing together. “What’s going on?” he called.

“Nat? Come on down.”

“What?”

“We’ve got a candle.”

“From above.”

“A big fat one.”

“So?”

“What do you mean-so?”

“I mean what about getting back up?” Nat said.

Pause. Nat heard them talking, but too low to distinguish the words. “Just toss the matches down, if you’re going to be like that,” one of them said. Had to be Grace. She must have realized it was a chandelier before she jumped, must have thought she could hang on to it and somehow lower herself down. But still: she’d leaped into darkness, an unknown darkness. He’d seen it.

“Grace?” he said.

“Yeah?”

The match went out. One left. “How will you find them in the dark?” Nat said.

“No clue,” said Grace. “Wasn’t my idea.”

“If everyone just shuts up,” Izzie said, “we’ll hear them land.”

A dumb idea. Nat heard a giggle: Grace’s giggle, surely. Then came silence, a deep silence down there under the campus. He thought of the land above, the way he’d seen it on the drive out of town in the Rolls, ancient and austere. An uncomfortable thought from down where he was, beneath it, although he didn’t know why. They weren’t lost, or anything like that.

“Trust me,” Izzie said; had to be Izzie.

“Was that you, Izzie?”

“Who else?”

Only one left. A dumb idea. Nat dropped the matchbook through the hole, just let it go. He felt the friction strip as it slid off his fingertips.